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A tree. It can be 17-30 m tall. It grows taller in tropical places. The trunk is grey often with a red tinge. The branches are grooved and hairy and droop. The leaves are dark green. The leaves have 1-5 pairs of leaflets. These are almost opposite. They are oblong with a drawn out point. They are 4-15 cm long. The young leaflets are pink. The flowers are white and in the axils of leaves. They are in clusters 8 cm long. The fruit is a capsule are triangular in shape. These are 2.5 cm wide. They are pink and leathery. They become hard with age and split open. They are bright crimson inside with shiny black seeds. These are 1.3 cm long. The seeds are edible.
Leaves 4–10 cm. long; petiole 4–10 mm. long, hairy like the branchlets; leaflets 1–3(5)-jugate; rhachis terete, hairy like the branchlets; petiolules up to 4 mm. long; leaflet-lamina up to 15 × 6·5 cm., elliptic or oblong-elliptic or ovate-oblong, usually with tufts of hairs on the under surface in the axils of the lateral nerves, otherwise glabrous, apex usually acuminate and rounded at the tip, margin entire, base cuneate to obtuse; lateral nerves 5–8 pairs.
The flowers are often solitary towards the apex of the rhachis and in cymules towards the base so that the inflorescence is a raceme towards the apex and a racemoid thyrse towards the base.
Tree up to 25 m. tall (often much shorter in our area) or large shrub; bark dark grey; branchlets greyish-or fulvous-tomentellous or pubescent.
Fruit crimson, up to 40 × 25 mm., obovoid-pyriform with wings 1–3 mm. broad, tomentellous to pubescent when young, glabrescent.
Stamens 8–10; filaments 4 mm. long, pilose; staminodes much shorter in 9 flowers.
Inflorescences 2–6(8) cm. long, usually in the axils of fallen leaves.
Flowers white; pedicels c. 4 mm. long, elongating to 6 mm. in fruit.
Ovary 1·5 mm. long, shortly pubescent; style 1·5 mm. long, 3-lobed.
Seed black, shiny, 10 × 6 mm., cylindric-ellipsoid, glabrous.
3 shining black seeds, each a yellow aril.
Ripe fruits red or pinkish red
Flowers whitish, very fragrant
A forest tree, 10–60 ft. high
Petals 2–2·5 × 2 mm.
Sepals 1·5 mm. long.
